Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic, Echo Youth, The Q, May 11-20 May 2023

  At its heart, Matt Cox's "Puffs" is a work of fanfiction - that subgenre where fans of a piece of work take the concepts of someone else's work and transform it into an alternative retelling that can look at underexamined elements of the original, tell different stories using the building blocks they've fallen in love with, and maybe even do a few small repairs on the plotholes or dodgy worldbuilding that come from a story that's designed to centre two or three heroic central characters, not be an all encompassing thoroughly consistent mythos for people to live their entire lives in. And like all fanfiction, if you're not aware of the work it's building from or don't know the details it's using, it can feel a bit shallow or like a lot of confusing references thrown at you at great speed. For those who've dabbled in the obsession, though, it can be a complete delight as you get a chance to dive deeper into the thing that you love - or, in the case of the increasingly-jaded-in-retrospect-largely-due-to-the-Author's-public-actions-Harry-Potter-Fandom, used to love but now have mixed thoughts about.

Of course, presenting a world that's been previously the domain of seven novels, seven very expensive movie adaptations, one (or two, depending on the version) very expensive theatrical spin-off, and three still-expensive-but-not-very-financially-successful-spin-off-movies on a Canberra Local Theatre budget, is a choice only the brave, the ingenious or the foolish would attempt. Fortunately, Jordan Best (with the assistance of Callum Docherty and their many props, costume, performers, and technical boffins) is indeed the first two of those things.  Her production is a triumph of creativity, imagination, and pure theatrical skill as she and her cast use John Nicholl's set of five doors-attached-to-bookcases and a mindbogglingly large set of props, costumes, wigs, and the occasional puppet to cover the story of a couple of thousand pages of popular children's literature from the alternate angle of those kinda left off to the side of the main heroic narrative - the background characters who normally get a namecheck and not much more in someone else's story. 

There's strong ensemble work from the entire team, building the Puffs as a bunch of confused but sweet-natured  types - subject to other people's bullying, never quite on top of their schoolwork, often left behind while the focus is on the more obviously heroic-or-villainous characters draw the attention of everyone around them. There's a real warmth and bond between them, and as most of the cast slip into and out of multiple characters they are delightfully unified, whether indulging in running gags, spoofing very-specific-performance-choices from the movies the sense of communal play reaches across the footlights, and embraces the audience - it's a romp that demands the audience join in and play along with them, and the ensemble are a great bunch of playmates. 

For anybody who ever liked those seven increasingly-lengthy tomes, watched the movies, did an online quiz to find out which house you were in, or has simply spent a little time shopping in Quizzic Alley in Fyshwick, this will be a delightful chance to indulge in your continuing-or-former-obsession, full of charm, humour and the occasional slightly serious bit.